Community Book Program Reopens
Dark Chapter in U.S. History

The Champlain College Community Book Program (CBP) marked its eighth year of bringing authors to campus in the fall 2006 semester by hosting Julie Otsuka, author of When the Emperor Was Divine (Alfred Knopf, 2002). Otsuka’s debut novel chronicles a Japanese-American family’s experiences with forced internment during World War II.

Over several days in September, the New York City–based Otsuka gave readings for classes and the public and also participated in discussions focusing on one of the most regrettable -- yet underacknowledged, some say -- chapters in U.S. history. When the Emperor Was Divine “was a total eye-opener,” says program co-chair Shelli Goldsweig. “We have to accept responsibility, and we should feel a fair amount of guilt about what happened and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” Otsuka’s visit also inspired more than a dozen faculty- and staff-led workshops that explored the persistence of racism and discrimination and the complex nature of identity in our nation.

Although Otsuka’s novel is a work of fiction, her family history mirrors events in When the Emperor Was Divine. Her grandfather was arrested by the FBI the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle, and grandmother were sent to an internment camp several months later. Eventually, more than 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans were confined to “relocation centers” in the U.S. on the basis of reports that up to 25 percent of Japanese Americans were of “dubious loyalty.”

For Goldsweig and other CBP organizers, When the Emperor Was Divine and the conversations it sparked were well aligned with the program’s goal of drawing readers out of their comfort zones. “We try to choose a book that is really going to shake people up and make them think about things in a different way,” she says.

Past CBP authors include such notable literati as Tim O’Brien, E.L. Doctorow, Ernest Gaines, and Julia Alvarez. The fall 2007 visiting author will be Dave Eggers, author of What Is the What (McSweeney’s, 2006), a novel about the civil war in Sudan as viewed through the eyes of a fictional Sudanese refugee living in the U.S.

— Kris Surette, with additional reporting by Natalie Drumov ’07